It would be comforting to imagine that the reason crowds are flocking to see this production is concern about a miscarriage of justice - the fate of Timothy Evans, put to death for the murder of his wife and child, both victims of Christie in his notorious home. But it is not. A love of the macabre is what packs the crowds into this brutishly dark show each night.
"Oh, it's a body," a woman shrieks, stepping on something soft as she takes her front-row seat. It is, and there are bones sticking up about the place too. Later, when rain pours down on to the set the same woman gets a soaking. She smiles. Though neither moment is scripted, they sum up what this play is about: melodramatic thrills, horror and laughing in the face of it.
The set, a festering box of tricks, is melodramatically lit like a haunted house with the cast of four slithering round it to narrate, and dip in and out of the chilling scenes. But there is too much in the way of narration from the Ludovic Kennedy book from which the play is adapted. Excessive "female dominance" in Christie's early life, says Kennedy, made him the horror he was. We then see Christie killing women, with repulsive details ("urine and excreta coming from her after death") and there is a queasy sense of a half-justification from the authority given to Kennedy's words.
There is much to praise, however. The performances are horribly faultless, especially Rupert Farley's Christie, and the play does what it sets out to do: thrill darkly. It is not a serious study of Christie or a campaigning piece against the death penalty. Enjoyable in the same way as true-crime books are, this is a ghoulish, limited (and therefore safe, permissible) revelling in horror.
Imagine the same kind of play about Fred and Rosemary West, however, and the bigger issues that dog this venture become clear. What exactly are we doing, sitting in a theatre, admiring the drama of all this? Why do we stay in our seats as Christie tells us of his attempts at sexual intercourse with freshly killed women? These are the questions the play avoids. And the absence of reflection renders this a well-executed (pun intended) piece of titillation rather than serious theatre.
Until November 18. Box office: 0141-429 0022
